Chevrolet Beat - Plans to Modify

Fellow BHPians! I call for your help once more. Come February 2012, I plan to start work on my Chevrolet Beat. Before I talk about what all I have in mind, I would like to share with you a little story. Back in July, I was Mumbai. What I drove then was the love of my life. A Maruti 800 2005 4 Speed MPFi model. What made it better was that I had had that car for about 2.5 years. I used to drive it as a student in Bangalore. I used to keep dreaming about what all I would do to the car if I had the $$. Then I started working in Mumbai so I drove the car there. Since my job was field based, I drove the car much more than the time in Bangalore. What the car needed then was some performance enhancements. So I went in for a KBX OEM Brake Booster while preparing for the Blr-Mum trip. That really did work well for the brakes. This was done sometime around Aug 2010. Fast forward to Feb 2011. My birthday was coming up. So I request my parents for some $$ and went in for a K&N conical air filter and an AutoMech FFE. Also, during my student days I had managed to somehow save enough and buy myself a Sony HE with CD-Player and Aux In. Feb 2011 gave me an opportunity to upgrade the speakers and install a Woofer. All well and good. In fact this was the best birthday of my life! Fast forward a bit more, let's visit my life in july 2011. With plans to move back to Delhi, I had to make the heart-breaking decision to sell the car. Now since it was registered in KA, I decided to take one last long trip. Started for Blr from Mum. I had put up an Ad on Classifieds on TBHP and got a lot of responses. I stopped overnight in belgaum this time. Started again the next morning. Was heading from the main town to NH 8. And that's when I realized the importance of seat belts. I crashed head on into a Force Gurkha. The car suffered a terrible amount of damage, but mainly because of the seat belt I got saved. I sold her that very day to a local who was willing to buy her. The net financial loss (from the price I expected) was close to about 50k. On the night bus to Blr, I almost cried. Fast forward another two weeks, and I was in Delhi. My father had recently bought a Honda Accord and still had his old Hyundai Elantra. So I was asked to drive the Elantra. My sister currently drives the Beat and is getting married in January. She has asked my to drive the Beat after that. Needless to day, we will be selling off the Elantra. With a heart-break and an Elantra stuck with me, I have lived the past few months. Since the idea has been to sell off the Elantra, I have not been much of a grease-monkey with it. With the M800, I was perpetually always spending most of my free time at an accessories shop. So even though there's more than two months to go before I would start work on the Beat, I have been itching to write to my Fellow BHPians about what I have in mind and their suggestions and comments on it :) ! BTW, the reason I told my M800 tale was so that I could easily refer back to any points. Also because it was the first car I ever owned, and the condition I kept it in speaks more about me than anything else. (Hint: The condition was good! Very good!) I'll try to quote my wish list here for the Beat to the best extent possible. Any suggestion on omissions/additions/editions are most welcome. 1. I detest the OEM rim and tire arrangement. Need to upgrade to atleast 16'' if not 17'' alloys. Plus Yokohama S Drives - from what I hear they're pretty neat. Would really appreciate some pointers from the tyre gurus on this. 2. Conical Air Filter (K&N or Green Cotton), along with an FFE. I did like Automech, but I still want to know of your opinions on the other brands. 3. Have to get rid of so many scratched and nicks and dents on the Beat. My sister is a very good driver. But as Delhi-ites would know, the body damage is a constant pain here. 4. Upgrade to better speaker arrangement. I was thinking about 6'' component set-up up front (Dashboard mounted speakers), 6.5'' Oval shaped 3 Way speakers at the rear. I had a box arrangement for the rear speakers in my M800. Was considering the same here. A woofer with a 4 Channel Amp - 2 for the front speakers, 2 for the Woofer. 5. Interior hidden lighting on the floor wells - I did this for my friend's Swift in Bangalore. It seemed neat. Will definitely be Blue to go with the Instument Lighting. 6. Add on LEDs on the front. Will try for the Philips DRLs that I see on so many cars these days. 7. Headlight assembly change to a xenon (the round ones) set. Need to see the costs of a high quality setup. If this is too high, I might consider the slightly cheaper option of HIDs (I do hope I am using the correct terminologies. By HID I am referring to the changeover to the Blue-White lights without changing the entire headlamp assembly). 8. Blacking of the B-Pillars. 9. Might consider smoking out the rear lamps a bit. This needs your comments please. 10. Sun Films with UV resistance. Would probably go in for V-Kool or 3M based on what I have read in other threads. Although I had Garware in my M800 - and it seemed to work well enough. 11. Rear defogger and washer-wiper as I have the LS model which does not have these as standard. To share another thought, I prefer my car look good, but not too flashy. Basically to have a subtle touch to it. With this, it would be excellent to get your views. Also, I call out to the excellent Photoshop guys who might be interested to edit the images and show different effects of the suggestions. Will upload pics of the car to help with this. I will continue to update this thread as and when thee's more to add. Cheers and drive safe. Sam

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